- Out of a small office, Delaware investigators have sent irreplaceable historical artifacts home to Europe, South America and the U.S.
- These include letters from Christopher Columbus, Nazi diaries, and millennia-old manuscripts and coins
- Investigators from across the country have consulted the Delaware office for assistance
The crime sounded like the plot to a movie.
At the secure private library of the Vatican, home to countless ancient treasures, a forger was afoot. The same was true in the centuries-old Riccardiana Library in Florence, at the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona, at the Marciana National Library in Venice.
In daring burglaries dating back to at least the 1980s, a sophisticated thief had lifted priceless 15th-century bound editions of letters Christopher Columbus had sent from the New World, and replaced them with clever fakes — forgeries left undiscovered for decades, and left on display for the world to believe in.
